At Chanel couture, Matthieu Blazy throws some magic beans

Traditional couture is often defined by what weighs it down: metres of fabric, hours of embroidery, intricate ornamentation, decades of codes. But in Matthieu Blazy’s vision for Chanel, it seems to float. For his second haute couture collection for the house, the artistic director of fashion activities turned to the magic and wonder of childhood fairy tales to imagine a collection that felt like a dream brought to life.

Ahead of Chanel’s autumn/winter 2026-27 haute couture show, the maison released an animated short film inspired by the story of Jack and The Beanstalk. As the story goes, Jack trades his family’s cow for magic beans, which his mother throws out in anger. But overnight, the beans grow into a towering vine that pierces the sky, leading Jack to a castle full of treasures. This enchanted world—one of wonder, danger, and discovery—becomes the setting for Blazy’s latest couture collection.

For the show, Blazy traded the glass-domed central exhibition hall of the Grand Palais for the Salon d’Honneur, a smaller, more intimate venue on the first floor of the historic building. The room was fittingly transformed into a bewitching garden: walls festooned with swirling vines and gigantic toxic flowers that lifted golden chairs towards the ceiling, which was, again, aptly fashioned into a bright blue sky. Vegetation was everywhere, creeping throughout the room like a scene straight out of a storybook.

The starting point of the collection didn’t come from a movie but Gabrielle Chanel’s own life. While exploring Chanel’s apartment, Blazy discovered a small book in her library titled Les Fées, Contes des Contes (Fairies, Tales of Tales). “I started to wonder, was Gabrielle Chanel’s life a fairy tale?” he said in the show notes. “I found a small book in her library, Les Fées, Contes des Contes, and asked myself if, together with the Haute Couture ateliers, we could make garments that tell stories like a book.” And so, references to the fairy tales many of us grew up with appeared in flashes throughout the collection: Jack and The Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Puss in Boots, The Ugly Duckling and more.

The opening look set the tone for the collection: a translucent lilac vest and skirt set so impossibly light that it looked like if it weren’t for the guipure anchoring it, it would’ve taken flight. Similar iterations of dresses and skirts in sheer silk mousseline followed, some densely embroidered with vines and flowers or tethered by gold charm-adorned chains, and others bereft of any ornamentation, as seen on Lakshmi Menon. Surprisingly, rustic elements like straw (which was actually raffia) made it onto the runway on scarecrow-inspired looks that nodded to the character from L Frank Baum’s world, while the heavier tweed looks—a signature of the house—were made to feel lighter with slashes on the skirts that revealed the undersides rendered in sheer fabric. House ambassador Bhavitha Mandava wore a dress made with layers of lightweight fabric featuring painstakingly hand-cut blooms and exposed decorative seams, while Anok Yai appeared in a wispy one-shoulder periwinkle dress worn over lace boxers, its trail floating in the air behind her as she walked past.

Effervescent couture has become a trademark for Blazy’s Chanel: pieces that balance tactility and movement, appearing effortless while masking the extraordinary skill required to engineer them from the flou ateliers and artisans of Le19M. Blazy’s first couture outing in January earlier this year explored this weightlessness too, featuring whisper-light fabrics that prioritised comfort without letting go of the fantasy.

There were, of course, moments that showcased the mastery of Chanel’s tailleur: some great oversized suit sets with miniskirts (including the one seen on Bhoomika Yadav) and coats that were simple in appearance but divine in execution. The fairy tale references emerged in smaller, delicious details: buttons in the form of yellow ducklings, a bevy of swans emblazoned on a dress, a vine creeping up the heel of a shoe (with a man underneath—Jack, is that you?), a pea pod- or egg- and chicken-shaped heel, and minaudières resembling beans, chickens, and sleeping bears. 

The bride, who traditionally appears at the end of the show, arrived in the third quarter wearing a traditional lace veil, a lace shirt with mother-of-pearl floral buttons, and a flouncy mermaid ankle-grazing skirt. The closing look instead belonged to a classic off-shoulder little black dress, its neckline adorned with black hand-cut florals (what appeared to be latex)—a modern ‘revenge dress’, acknowledging how the founder was a bachelorette. It’s a fitting tribute given that the LBD originated a hundred years ago, as an invention of Coco herself.

At the centre of the collection, however, was not the fairy tale but the woman living inside it. The soundtrack of the show reinforced this idea—a voiceover by Belgian interdisciplinary artist Jeanna Criscitiello that was essentially a mundane checklist in a woman’s day, moving through the rhythms of everyday life. There was also ‘Kiss Me’ by Sixpence None The Richer and the finale was soundtracked to ‘The Bargain Store’ by Dolly Parton, the single that was once banned from radio stations after being accused of being too suggestive. “Haute couture at Chanel is not just a fairy tale; in essence it is for women, their realities and their adventures of the everyday,” Blazy said. The show might have offered an escape from reality in all its whimsy, but it was not detached from it. In fact, it imagined a world where fantasy and real life could coexist.

“I want everyone to feel joy watching a Chanel show,” CEO Leena Nair said after the presentation. And for those 15 minutes inside the Salon d’Honneur, that is exactly what happened: guests were transported back to a simpler time, to the feeling of opening a story book and believing, even briefly, that anything was possible.